so embarrassing to watch yourself become obsessed with a character that feels tailor made for you specifically to become obsessed with. feels like i fell into a trap made just for me. like damn they got me. those are all the things i like and go crazy for
To say that masculinity is a flawed construct that inflicts serious psychological damage to many in its current state is true. To say that femininity in comparison is liberatory and pure and the "superior option" for most or all of the people on the planet is nuclear cope. Just weapons-grade ideological myopia. Please put the phone down and only return to the conversation when you can deepen your analysis beyond "this thing is evil because it makes me personally feel bad, and this thing is pure because it makes me personally feel good".
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Best Served Cold (Video Game)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bartender | Player Character/Peter Wagner, Bartender | Player Character/Hugo Mertens, Bartender | Player Character/Hugo Mertens/Peter Wagner
Characters: Bartender | Player Character (Best Served Cold), Hugo Mertens, Peter Wagner, Elena Earnest
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Prohibition Era, Characters Being Bad at Feelings, OT3, idk why but I just feel like Peter would be really good at giving blowjobs, Hugo hasn't had any practice alas but fortunately I bet he's a quick study, before I even found the dialogue tree about Laura my brain was like 'oh damn his fiancee totally left him bc he got hella obssessive about work huh', Peter and his affectionate nicknames give me life, I can only assume 'blue' is just as much about Hugo's eyes as it is his profession, ACAB includes Hugo Mertens, tbh I think he'd agree, especially at the end there
Summary:
“Save it, detective,” he said. “I’m keenly fucking aware she deserves a fuck of a lot better than me. She also deserves a fuck of a lot better than you, too.”
Mertens opened his mouth, as if to object, but then he closed it, heaving a sigh and glancing over at the bar again, where she was now talking to Ilya.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I know. Believe me, I know.” He shook his head and continued down the steps, moving to his usual table by the wall without another word.
Peter watched him for a moment, frowning. He hadn’t actually expected the bastard to agree with him on that.
Peter Wagner and Hugo Mertens have a lot more in common than they'd like to admit. Their respective feelings for the bartender are merely at the top of that list... and now they're finally starting to figure that out.
I understand the reasoning behind prison abolition, and there’s no denying our carceral system needs to be replaced with something better, but I have ultimately come around to the belief that we do need prisons. Unfortunately.
That doesn’t mean they need to be terrifying hellholes with the constant threat of rape or other violence hanging over one’s head, of course. And all redress of crime should attempt rehabilitation over punishment where possible. The problem is that the crimes that do the most damage to our world a) are rarely punished at all, because a lot of people secretly or not so secretly think they’re good or fine; and b) are rarely committed by people capable of rehabilitation.
For instance: rapists, as a general rule, do not rehabilitate. What do we do in this situation? Do we keep giving them chances to re-offend and victimize more people? Do we keep them locked up and away from the rest of us for the remainder of their lives? Do we sentence them to death? We know the first option doesn’t work, since that’s what we do now (if they even get to the point where incarceration is possible), but beyond that I’m not sure. I know I’m currently leaning toward the last option, if I’m honest. It’s just an undeniable fact that a world with fewer rapists in it is a better, safer world.
It unfortunately seems clear that there will always be dangerous people who need to be separated from the rest of civilized society for our collective safety. It’s just that we don’t ever really lock up these people, what with the vast majority of them being in power, and instead waste resources on brutalizing those who commit far more minor crimes (or no crimes at all!) instead.
I can’t help but think that if we approached rape and white collar crime with the same moral disgust that we currently waste on drug-related crime, we would be in a much better place overall.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Leverage (US TV 2008)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sophie Devereaux/Nathan Ford, Alec Hardison/Parker/Eliot Spencer
Characters: Nathan Ford, Maggie Collins, Sophie Devereaux (Leverage), Eliot Spencer (Leverage), Alec Hardison, Parker (Leverage)
Additional Tags: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Self-Medication, Child Death, Canonical Character Death, Introspection, Fanmix, Depression, Anxiety
Summary:
“It’s appreciated, you know, even if I don’t always act like it,” he told him once, drunkenly of course, and for one horrible second Nate worried that Eliot was going to ask him what he appreciated—but he didn’t, just met his eyes, briefly, and nodded.
“I know,” he’d said, a faint smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. “It’s one of the reasons we all still put up with you.”
A ficmix for Nate Ford and that massive (troublesome) brain of his.
A cat is a small creature in the middle of the food chain that is fully aware that you are a very large thing that could stomp its head in at any moment and yet it chooses to rest its tiny little head on your leg for a nap and spreads out on the floor near you exposing its belly and its most sensitive organs. It brings dead mice and bugs to you to share food.
Don’t you get it? This tiny thing trusts you. It wants to help you too. It licks your leg thinking that it’s helping. It kneads on you to find comfort. It shares its body warmth with you in the cold and gives you your space in the heat. It hisses at other mammals it sees outside including other cats in an effort to protect its family.
Cats love you so so much. But they will keep trying to eat plastic.
aka these thoughts will not leave me alone so now I am sharing them here.
Nate Ford is the sort of character I deeply enjoy; that is, I like him despite frequently wanting to shake him repeatedly until he stops being an idiot. That is the mark of a well-written character to me, honestly. Do I want to slap him across the face? Often. Do I also want him to be happy? Obviously! But with Nate, those are related; he doesn’t know shit about fuck when it comes to even a single goddamned thing that will actually make him happy until about season five. Ergo, he does a lot of dumb, wrong stuff first—hence the shaking and the slapping.
Anyway, this exists because John Rogers (who, to be clear, I adore, even though he is, to be clear, completely wrong) mentioned on BlueSky something about one of Nate’s potential D&D classes being cleric.
No, that’s not a typo. Cleric.
Yes, that kind of cleric.
No, I don’t understand it either.
After I stopped staring in disbelief, wondering if perhaps that word somehow had a different meaning in Canada, I started thinking about this. I honestly haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. It is fully 100% my Roman Empire now. At least once a day I stop and have the thought ‘John Rogers thinks Nate’s D&D class could be cleric. I don’t…’ and kind of stare off into the middle distance while I once again try to wrap my brain around this utterly baffling concept.
Nate. Cleric. Okay. I’m open-minded, I can entertain the thought that this is possible, surely. How could that work? I suppose there’s the religious aspect, but that’s not really what D&D clerics are about, so that connection feels surface level at best. There’s the belief in something greater than oneself—in Nate’s case, it wasn’t really God so much as rules and order. He ran as far away as possible from his criminal father’s chaotic lifestyle as he could and was assured, assured that if he just followed the rules, then the rules, the system—well, they would of course always* take care of him in turn!
*some exceptions apply, see terms and conditions
I can see paladin there very easily, what with the whole Oath system. Vengeance or Oathbreaker Paladin? Ooh, Oathbreaker Paladin but really it was the Oath that turned on him, not the other way around? That’d be fun. Damn, now I want to play that character.
The problem here is the stats, in my opinion. Nate Ford does not have a high enough WIS score to be an effective cleric and I am baffled by the thought that he does. The man is the living embodiment of the rigid, left brain, analytical observer. His knowledge of human behavior is pattern recognition, not intuition; he makes his insight checks with his intelligence modifier, if you will. (He also has Expertise.)
By the end of OG Leverage, I posit Nate’s stats are:
14 STR / 13 DEX / 15 CON / 22 INT / 14 WIS / 18 CHA
I can see his charisma stat being higher. Charisma isn’t just charm and flirting, after all; it’s the art of provoking a specific emotional reaction in response to your behavior. Sometimes you’re trying to provoke them into hitting you upside the head. Nate is extremely good at this sort of charisma.
I also debated putting his constitution higher, but he did die like eight years into retirement, so eh. Having your entire worldview shattered through an unimaginable and maliciously unnecessary tragedy ages a person pretty rapidly, I imagine, particularly when the chaser is copious amounts of alcohol.
In any event, I’ve been doing some recent rewatching, and so I come bearing textual citations. Many, many textual citations.
In The Nigerian Job, we have the scene where Eliot tries to talk to Nate while they’re playing pool. Eliot’s insight is wisdom based, and you can see it on display here. He literally explains Nate’s conscience to him in this scene. Nate’s rigidly ethical brain is in a full on guilt spiral: ‘but breaking the law is bad, this should feel bad, why doesn’t this feel bad, why does this feel good, this can’t feel good, this is not allowed to feel good…’
But, as Eliot points out, quite casually: so what if what they’re doing is illegal? Dubenich is a bad guy, and bad guys aren’t supposed to get away with the bad guy shit they do. That’s what actually matters to Nate, ultimately. Everything else is just theater.
It’s the underlying thesis of the entire show, in other words: the difference between order and justice, and the reminder that eventually you have to pick one.
Textually, Nate’s response to this version of insight is defensiveness and misdirected hostility, which makes sense, because when you’re used to intellectualizing your feelings, actually feeling them is overwhelming and horrible, especially at first. This is only further compounded if you also have a precarious relationship with sobriety and are kinda maybe possibly just a little bit self-medicating your depression and anxiety with alcohol.
The show also sets up parallels between Nate and Parker right away, and this is one; Parker’s insight works the same way Nate’s does. In The Bank Shot Job, we see this: when Nate stays inside the bank instead of walking out with the cash, it’s Parker who says, “Don’t be an idiot, Hardison! Sophie was still in there.”
Why did Parker understand that emotional connection and put it together faster than Hardison? I think we can all agree her emotional intuition is much worse than his, particularly in season one—but she is much more observant. She watches and she learns, much like Nate does.
And, like Nate’s brain, her brain is constantly making connections—thus, in full on pattern recognition mode, she had already noticed and was now connecting Nate’s previous patterns of behavior to his behavior in the bank, resulting in her immediate (correct) deduction of his motives.
Nate and Parker are insightful the way Sherlock Holmes is insightful, and if anyone wants to tell me Sherlock motherfucking Holmes has a WIS score high enough to be a cleric, I need you to please share the strong drugs you’re on, they sound bizarre and amazing.
Just about the entire fandom headcanons Parker as on the spectrum; so, I posit, is Nate, and human nature is his special interest.
Nate is your dad’s friend who has the most intricate model train setup imaginable in his basement and will easily spend four hours telling you every single detail about every single type of model train currently in existence (whether you wanted to know or not)—except instead of trains, all of that meticulous mental energy is being channeled toward this.
It’s really no surprise he gave some dude a nosebleed with the power of his mind, honestly.
Next, in The First David Job, we have Nate absolutely sure that Parker will be able to steal The First David on a whim, because he knows damn well she started idly planning how to steal it the instant they started talking about it. She can’t turn that off any more than he can turn his brain off, and he knows it. There’s also Nate being smacked upside the head by emotion and deflecting that emotion once again in response.
Sophie calls him out on none of this being a selfless crusade on his part either, and rather than acknowledge that, Nate deflects with, “Well, I was right, wasn’t I? That is the voice you use on a mark.”
Nate can’t handle the intense emotion going on right now and has to retreat behind solving things and being right in order to deal.
“Always your fatal flaw,” Sophie tells him. “You think too much.”
You know. Wisdom.
In The Second David Job, we have further Nate-Parker parallels, as once Nate informs the others that Blackpoole and Sterling know they’re coming, Parker smiles what can only be described as a terrifyingly knowing smile before she asks, “And how do they know that?”
Nate, looking directly at her, and knowing damn well she already knows the answer, replies, “Because I told them.”
Later, during further planning, it’s Parker who first says, “What about Maggie?” The others misinterpret her at first, but Nate snaps his head toward her a little, brain clearly whirring madly—he knows exactly what she means, immediately.
Parker is also the one who asks him point blank, “So, fine, without Maggie, what’s plan B?” because she knows damn well there isn’t one.
Of course, the ruse they attempt on Maggie falls flat on its face, as it is literally Nate’s jealousy that fucks it up for them. He insisted Eliot wear that button cam because of it, and she immediately clocks that something is up because of it.
Ah, yes. Wisdom.
Shortly after that we have the Nate-Maggie confrontation and conversation where Nate finally tells Maggie about Blackpoole denying the claim that might’ve saved Sam’s life, and she hits him with, “Why didn’t you tell me this? I work with these people, I am friendly with them. You just let me walk around like an idiot! He’s my son too!” Quite tragically she doesn’t also literally hit him, perhaps with a rock or maybe a truck, which is what he thoroughly deserves for withholding that information from her.
Why did he do that, she asks?
“I didn’t want you to hate me,” he tells her, by which he means, “I hate myself for what I now see as my complicity in our son’s death by working for someone who could so coldly make that decision, simply not questioning this horrible policy until it affected me personally… and I assumed you would too.”
“Why would I hate you?” Maggie then asks.
“I do,” he says, which is only part of the reason. Yes, depression is a filthy liar and incredibly persuasive. But with Nate, there’s also, “I’m wondering if I didn’t tell you in part because it meant you’d still have a genuine connection to that world I might be able to exploit if needed.”
Because truthfully, there’s no way that Nate didn’t immediately start plotting, even if just in his head, about how to ruin Blackpoole for what he did. Like Parker told Hardison in The First David Job: some people do crosswords.
This is routinely how his brain works! He thinks of these things abstractly (potential advantage in the future) but not of the personal emotional implications (it’s hella fucked up to not tell Maggie) until far later on.
But, yeah, sure. Wisdom.
I’m going to keep pointing out the Nate-Parker parallels as I see them because a) I love them and b) if Nate is a cleric then what does that say about Parker? Has your head exploded yet? Mine is getting close.
In The Beantown Bailout Job, we learn Nate quit drinking and rented a condo above a bar so that he might further punish himself. This man needs to try Wellbutrin or something, I swear to god.
“That’s very… Catholic,” says Eliot, succinctly.
Nate’s face in reaction to that line is super uncomfortable. He does not like being confronted with that insight. Of course not—it might inspire introspection of a sort that terrifies him to do. There’s a reason he just fundamentally doesn’t understand the motive behind Sophie’s sabbatical later on in this season.
Yet another quick little scene wherein Eliot basically just lays Nate’s id out on the table for inspection and Nate squirms awkwardly about it, wishing he were dead.
Also, like, there’s literally the part where Nate’s getting the crap kicked out of him, and we get this exchange:
“You’re Jimmy Ford’s kid, Nathan. Thought you were gonna become a priest.”
“Didn’t work out.”
So even if you were drawing the rather facile priest to cleric parallel, that’s a literal, explicit, textual refutation of the entire concept: it didn’t work out.
Further Nate-Parker shenanigans, in the form of half sentences because the other halves are implied:
“And this money came from,” Nate asks, inclined slightly toward Parker.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Perfect.”
The little satisfied smile on Parker’s face after that is blinding. That was something she decided to do. She’s already starting to think like a mastermind, staying multiple steps ahead.
And then we end that episode with Nate finding out Sophie has a boyfriend, buying a shot of whiskey, making out with it a little bit, and then setting it back down and walking away, because men will do anything except go to therapy.
But, absolutely, yes, I’m convinced. Wisdom!
In The Two Live Crew Job, we get a whole lot of fun obliviousness and Nate running into feelings that do not compute.
Starting with Sophie and Hardison in the van, there’s,“We trust Nate to make sure the plan works. We trust you to make sure we’re all okay,” from Hardison, neatly summing up the Nate and Sophie dichotomy and helpfully proving my entire point about the things Nate is good at and the things Nate is very much not good at.
Later: “Who does this guy think he is?” Nate asks of the arrogant, smug, know-it-all bastard waltzing in like he owns the place, neatly dodging the approximately seventeen metric fucktons of irony careening directly for his head.
He does this with zero self-awareness, of course, because Nate is neither introspective nor wise. He is brilliant, but emotions fuck him up.
The more of these episodes I rewatch the more I’m starting to believe that BlueSky post was in and of itself an elaborate con to drive me insane.
In The Three Strikes Job, we further explore Nate’s struggles with single fatherhood and his inability to properly sit with his emotions. There is, of course, the first message to Sophie, the very straightforward, “The team could really use you on this one,” aka the standard call of emotionally immature fathers everywhere, attempting as they do to guilt their wives into picking up their slack the moment things get a little dicey or emotionally fraught.
Yes, Nate, you are out of your depth. Sit with that for a minute, maybe.
It then continues to devolve, naturally:
“No one knows who they are,” insists man who has tried everything to feel better, except for literally anything that might make him feel better.
Throughout the episode, Nate continues to deny the obvious, snapping, “I’m not a thief,” so intensely that at this point it’s obvious he’s mainly trying to convince himself.
Being in denial about something is super wise, right? I think so. That sounds correct.
In further obvious parallels Nate is incredibly oblivious to:
“This guy dedicated his life to doing the right thing! And this is his payback? I mean, his family’s pain is what he deserves? If we don’t settle the score on this, why do we do this? Do you understand?”
The OT3 exchange a glance packed to the brim with meaning.
Yes, Nate, it is quite tragic that someone did the right thing all his life and then was ruthlessly betrayed for no real reason other than selfishness and greed. I just hope you can truly empathize with such an experience. I’m sure there is nothing in particular about this case that is causing this sort of reaction and it is merely justice you are inspired by.
Yes. That is absolutely a true convincing story that I believe.
In The Maltese Falcon Job, an old favorite comes back to delight us once more! That’s right, it’s time for the semi-annual ‘Eliot explains to Nate how his emotions work’ informative lecture. Let’s listen in!
“I think in the last six months, Nate, I’ve heard you talking about beating the triads, beating the Russians, all right? Maggie’s boyfriend, huh, how’d that work out? We all said that meet was a bad idea, all right? But you got a taste for taking down this mayor, and you can’t resist… Not walking away, that’s not my job. My job is to get your back, and Nate, I’m gonna do it, all the way down. But I need you to do your job.”
“And what’s that?”
Parker, straight to the point: “Be Nathan Ford. Be the person we came back for.”
Eliot’s job is to get Nate’s back. Sometimes getting his back involves telling him to get his shit together. That’s also why he tends to be his conscience interpreter and emotional regulation coach. (I do deeply appreciate how much this isn’t just left for Sophie to do. Sure, she does some of it, especially once they get together, but Eliot still does a lot of it even then… like, yes, men, you do still have a responsibility to help improve the other men around you even if there are also women in their lives!)
Nate continues to struggle as a single father but is finally beginning to appreciate all the emotional labor Sophie was handling for the team. Making sure everyone is okay is way harder than making sure the plan works, as it turns out.
Gosh, whoever could’ve guessed.
I’m seriously trying to understand where in all of these ‘Nate Ford has the emotional IQ of an unripe kumquat’ type scenes I was supposed to come away with the impression that he was wise. Am I being trolled? I’m being trolled, aren’t I? This was all a ploy to make an extra $5 in residuals, wasn’t it?
In The Jailhouse Job, Hardison straight up calls Nate out on his martyrdom: “Fine, Nate. We’re still out here, we’re doing the job. We help people nobody else helps. That’s important. You wanna stay around and miss out just because you gotta figure out your guilty conscience? That’s your loss.” (Meanwhile Eliot is eyeing him like “dammit Hardison you’re hot when you’re calling Nate on his bullshit.”)
Nate, of course, is under the impression that his “sacrifice” is “noble” rather than what it really is: a cowardly attempt to abdicate the responsibility he created for himself and the team.
Growth is not linear, as we know. Nate definitely made some strides in season two toward self-actualization but is now attempting to revert to the familiar: punishment. Punishment is rarely ambiguous, after all, and Nate is particularly adept at hiding behind his shame like it’s a shield: I did something wrong, I must be punished. Do we examine the wrongness of these actions and what makes them wrong? Do we consider who is determining what is wrong and why? Do we contemplate which of these so-called wrongs are being focused on, or even perhaps what sorts of punishments are expected?
No. He did something wrong. He must be punished. That does sound much simpler to deal with, doesn’t it?
The Inside Job is an amazing episode both in terms of Nate, Parker, their relationship with each other and with crime, but also Nate and Sophie and the ways they relate to the team. As they approach Parker’s apartment, we get a brilliant demonstration of their respective strengths:
Nate knows about the dummy addresses, because of course he does—that’s the sort of thing he would absolutely think to do, makes total sense to throw others off.
Sophie guesses Parker’s access code because she knows Parker.
“Who knows what goes on in that girl’s head?” Nate asks, and Sophie promptly answers via one freshly unlocked door, a delightful compare-and-contrast of INT-based and WIS-based insight.
Seriously, this scene is such a stark textual delineation of their abilities, and it continues as they enter Parker’s place, Sophie suddenly utterly baffled while Nate now seems totally nonchalant.
At first glance this looks like an inconsistency, but nah, it’s completely in line with what we’ve been shown re: the sorts of things Sophie and Nate are each experts at. Anytime it’s an internal, intuitive issue (what would Parker use for a password), Nate struggles. Anytime it’s something analytical or based on some observable pattern, (what would Parker’s physical space look like based on her typical behavior), he excels.
In contrast, Eliot’s lack of surprise is rooted in instinctual understanding, because he and Parker have their own similarities. (Like Sophie, he also guesses the code to get in, but he lets Hardison hack it just to be nice.)
I’ll give Nate credit in this episode; he’s come a long way and is making realizations that a season or so ago he never would’ve. This does mean, however, that the wisest Nate Ford has ever looked is in direct comparison to Archie Leech.
The phrase “damning with faint praise” comes to mind for some reason.
Parker of course quickly comes to the conclusion Nate already did, but was waiting for her to reach on her own. See, with Parker, Nate makes for a really effective mentor, because the way they synthesize information is just so similar. It’s awesome to see so plainly here.
“Okay, it’s your show. Go for it.” He’s so proud. It’s fucking adorable. I really did not pay close enough attention to how sweet the Nate-Parker relationship is. They’re honestly really cute.
I had to rewatch a bunch of The Rashomon Job twice because I forgot about the pink dress Gina Bellman wears in this episode and my brain short circuited a little the first time. Whomst amongst us, etc.
My favorite bits in this one are again between Nate and Parker. After Hardison finishes his story, I love the way Nate uses the teacups as he starts summing things up: “Sophie didn’t have the dagger. Eliot didn’t have the dagger. Hardison didn’t have the dagger.”
Then he looks knowingly at Parker, taps her left hand, and she smirks knowingly back, revealing the little ball, a neat little foreshadowing of what happens in Nate’s tale… I love it.
“Yeah,” she says, and that look they share! Man, they are adorable, honestly.
Then, later on, it is—of course!—Parker who first zeroes in on the next twist: “...Nate?”
Another knowing smile.
Anyway, things I know for a fact:
1) Sophie and Eliot hooked up that night and probably broke the bed
2) there is no universe wherein Sophie freakin’ Devereaux doesn’t know when a man has that obvious a crush on her, Nate, I call utter bullshit, that’s a “saw him use the air vents” level of sus, my friend
3) Parker’s version is the most true
In The San Lorenzo Job, first, an aside: we get a delightful little scene where Parker determines how far down a pipe goes via echolocation, basically, because she’s a goddamn badass. I love her so much.
But anyway, more relevantly: this entire episode is Sophie turning Vittori into the dude he needs to be to actually help San Lorenzo and Nate watching that and coordinating his plan around her. It’s honestly pretty romantic, especially for Nate! Extra especially since she jumped in to keep his plan afloat. I think this was very sweetly reflected by the way Sophie felt at the end—partners. A team. Friends. Aka, the foundation that every actual successful romantic relationship has to be built on!
And it does—once again—reinforce their respective types of expertise.
In The Long Way Down Job, first thing:
“I’ve heard of denial, but climbing a mountain to avoid talking about…”
Nate, once again, deeply uncomfortable being confronted with his emotions and his inevitable compartmentalization of them.
Ah, truly the wisest among us.
Of course Parker’s the one to first mention that they’ve already stolen a mountain, and then her boyfriends helpfully jump in to assist, Hardison getting the KO: “You were also very drunk on that one.”
Nate, naturally, immediately flees.
“You’ll suit up? You shouldn’t even be up here.” Ooh, the opening notes of that familiar and beloved tune, the certified classic, ‘shut up and listen to Eliot, Nate, he knows better than you about this’.
Nate’s weak attempt at deflection is to pretend Eliot is the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, which Eliot wisely ignores and continues on: “Every second you’re on this mountain, your clock is ticking. You’re very good at what you do, but you can’t con a mountain.”
Nate, later, to Karen, with zero self-awareness: “You’re emotionally involved, it leads to bad decisions.”
Hardison, literally taking the words out of my mouth: “I’m sorry, did you just say that? With a straight face?”
Thank you, Hardison! Thank you! Like, I really don’t know how many examples of this are needed to prove my point, but there are so many of them, I figure, why not have a bunch, you know?
“Do not do this! As if you ever listen to me,” Sophie says, surely something that all the wisest men in the world want to hear from their significant others.
Nate’s conversation with Karen is so poignant because we know it’s a hard-earned lesson for Nate. We’ve literally been watching him learn it! Nate’s entire character arc is rooted in this lesson!
The Eliot-Parker scene in this episode is, of course, perfection, and gut-wrenching in the best way possible. Although, she was slightly wrong—Nate would’ve eventually given up and left the body behind too, but then he would’ve drank himself into a coma afterward to escape the guilt.
…sort of a distinction without a difference, admittedly.
In The Boys’ Night Out Job, right out of the gate:
“Yes, I want to be like my father, good insight, Sophie.”
Sophie’s look says what she is too nice to say aloud: “Well, whether you want to or not…”
Everyone gangs up on Nate and his inability to Normal Person, while he insists he’s totally fine. The guys then start playing poker and he literally gets up and flees at the first hint of feelings.
Right, of course, how could I forget, isolating oneself and never talking about anything remotely emotional, just the absolute height of enlightenment and clarity. Truly, the wisdom, I am awed.
This episode makes it clear that Hurley has come further in his journey than Nate has in his, even with his habit of unwittingly stumbling into nonsense. He truly values what Nate and the team gave him and takes it seriously, takes it to heart, in a way Nate is just cynically scoffing at for much of this episode. Cynicism is the antithesis of wisdom. Cynicism is cowardice. Hurley is being vulnerable, and Nate still struggles a lot with being vulnerable.
Fortunately, he does seem to finally internalize this lesson at the end, when Hardison helpfully talks him through his emotions this time. (Eliot was busy flirting with Not-Sister Lupe, so it was his turn, you see.) “Hardison? Thanks.”
Growth! Improvement! 10000% still a massive work in progress!
The Last Dam Job, or: Nate Plays Magnificent Bastard—aka the most INT-based trope to ever trope in the history of tropes.
I adore the climax of this episode, which very dramatically takes place atop a dam (in what reads as a fun The Reichenbach Fall allusion), and is a very nice backdrop for Nate to deftly wrap up his whole plot.
I suppose at least this way he has some small amount of plausible deniability; he can tell himself that they both made the final choice themselves. Technically.
However, when you consider the fact that he deliberately provoked them both into fight or flight responses, painstakingly talked them through the fact that if one of them dies, the other goes free, and then placed a loaded weapon on the very edge of a dam before walking away—well, one wonders how much of a choice either of them really had, in the end.
Brutal, Nate. Poetic, but brutal. “Welcome to the next time,” indeed.
The psychology in play, especially at the end, is so Holmesian and the setting underlined that, which once again supports what I’ve been saying all along: Nate makes his insight checks with his intelligence modifier.
…nobody thinks that Sherlock Holmes’ D&D class is cleric, right?
Right?
The Frame Up Job right away has Nate barrelling straight into a special interest like a nerd, so that’s always fun.
Seriously, this episode is basic gender politics on display. You know that trope where someone (often female) is venting to their (often male) partner and the partner starts offering various suggestions on how to change or “fix” the situation, which only irritates the partner who is just trying to vent? That's the gist, except it's Nate and Sophie, so there are also felonies involved.
Just. Be there. For her. That’s all Sophie is asking in this episode, Nate.
Nate does come through on that front, fortunately. He does learn! He does grow. He does change. Sometimes it takes a minute to sink in, but it happens. The thing is: none of these are lessons an already wise man would need to learn.
Lastly, we have The Long Goodbye Job, absolutely one of the best series finales of all time, even if it does also probably count as a war crime. Psychological damage, you know.
I will for the rest of my life love the fact that since the whole death scene is just a story Nate made up, he specifically chose to include the detail of the OT3 dying together holding hands just because.
Subtle, Nate. Subtle.
You recall how in The Nigerian Job Eliot had to entirely explain to Nate why he felt good conning Dubenich and why his conscience was clear, aka the difference between order and justice, and how at that time Nate barely wanted to hear it? Fittingly, we then end with Nate offering exactly that choice to Sterling and telling him to pick one, knowing full well that Sterling will ultimately choose justice just like Nate did.
It’s a satisfying conclusion to his character arc for sure.
Now. Is Nate Ford a cleric? If he is, I can only imagine that he is not a very good one.
I will concede a dip of a level or two at some point is possible, maybe. But the only way cleric is Nate Ford’s main class is if you are categorically stating he is, at best, mediocre at what he does, and that is quite plainly not at all the case.
Nate Ford is a brilliant and profoundly broken man, forced to confront the grave inadequacies of his entire worldview in possibly the worst way imaginable. He craves interpersonal connections he has no idea how to cultivate, and it is very difficult for him to sit with his emotions, causing him to frequently lash out. He does not do well with intuition, emotion, or expression, but with patterns, deductions, and observations. He likes to understand how things work, he likes to understand how people work, “solving” them the way most people solve a crossword.
As I said before, I think these are Nate’s ending stats:
14 STR / 13 DEX / 15 CON / 22 INT / 14 WIS / 18 CHA
#but did john rogers say nate would be a GOOD cleric?#because the narrative descriptions of cleric fit Nate much better than the mechanical implementation#he's devoted to principles and believes in a higher calling#he's reluctantly taken up adventuring (crime) because of he believes the call of the god (justice) outweighs the actual acts of the church#(ie his insurance agency that he used to believe in)#he's just really shitty at the WIS side
oh yes! this is exactly why I like paladin for him!
plus committing to an 'oath' of beliefs feels very Nate... as does pissing off your friends with your dogmatic and overbearing behavior ;)
also something about paladins being charisma-based has always amused me idk. like you're not communing with a god or higher power so much as just shouting long and loudly enough about what you believe that they're eventually like "fine! okay! here's some magic! go fix whatever you're complaining about!" (which also seems very Nate lol)
aka these thoughts will not leave me alone so now I am sharing them here.
Nate Ford is the sort of character I deeply enjoy; that is, I like him despite frequently wanting to shake him repeatedly until he stops being an idiot. That is the mark of a well-written character to me, honestly. Do I want to slap him across the face? Often. Do I also want him to be happy? Obviously! But with Nate, those are related; he doesn’t know shit about fuck when it comes to even a single goddamned thing that will actually make him happy until about season five. Ergo, he does a lot of dumb, wrong stuff first—hence the shaking and the slapping.
Anyway, this exists because John Rogers (who, to be clear, I adore, even though he is, to be clear, completely wrong) mentioned on BlueSky something about one of Nate’s potential D&D classes being cleric.
No, that’s not a typo. Cleric.
Yes, that kind of cleric.
No, I don’t understand it either.
After I stopped staring in disbelief, wondering if perhaps that word somehow had a different meaning in Canada, I started thinking about this. I honestly haven’t been able to stop thinking about this. It is fully 100% my Roman Empire now. At least once a day I stop and have the thought ‘John Rogers thinks Nate’s D&D class could be cleric. I don’t…’ and kind of stare off into the middle distance while I once again try to wrap my brain around this utterly baffling concept.
Nate. Cleric. Okay. I’m open-minded, I can entertain the thought that this is possible, surely. How could that work? I suppose there’s the religious aspect, but that’s not really what D&D clerics are about, so that connection feels surface level at best. There’s the belief in something greater than oneself—in Nate’s case, it wasn’t really God so much as rules and order. He ran as far away as possible from his criminal father’s chaotic lifestyle as he could and was assured, assured that if he just followed the rules, then the rules, the system—well, they would of course always* take care of him in turn!
*some exceptions apply, see terms and conditions
I can see paladin there very easily, what with the whole Oath system. Vengeance or Oathbreaker Paladin? Ooh, Oathbreaker Paladin but really it was the Oath that turned on him, not the other way around? That’d be fun. Damn, now I want to play that character.
The problem here is the stats, in my opinion. Nate Ford does not have a high enough WIS score to be an effective cleric and I am baffled by the thought that he does. The man is the living embodiment of the rigid, left brain, analytical observer. His knowledge of human behavior is pattern recognition, not intuition; he makes his insight checks with his intelligence modifier, if you will. (He also has Expertise.)
By the end of OG Leverage, I posit Nate’s stats are:
14 STR / 13 DEX / 15 CON / 22 INT / 14 WIS / 18 CHA
I can see his charisma stat being higher. Charisma isn’t just charm and flirting, after all; it’s the art of provoking a specific emotional reaction in response to your behavior. Sometimes you’re trying to provoke them into hitting you upside the head. Nate is extremely good at this sort of charisma.
I also debated putting his constitution higher, but he did die like eight years into retirement, so eh. Having your entire worldview shattered through an unimaginable and maliciously unnecessary tragedy ages a person pretty rapidly, I imagine, particularly when the chaser is copious amounts of alcohol.
In any event, I’ve been doing some recent rewatching, and so I come bearing textual citations. Many, many textual citations.
In The Nigerian Job, we have the scene where Eliot tries to talk to Nate while they’re playing pool. Eliot’s insight is wisdom based, and you can see it on display here. He literally explains Nate’s conscience to him in this scene. Nate’s rigidly ethical brain is in a full on guilt spiral: ‘but breaking the law is bad, this should feel bad, why doesn’t this feel bad, why does this feel good, this can’t feel good, this is not allowed to feel good…’
But, as Eliot points out, quite casually: so what if what they’re doing is illegal? Dubenich is a bad guy, and bad guys aren’t supposed to get away with the bad guy shit they do. That’s what actually matters to Nate, ultimately. Everything else is just theater.
It’s the underlying thesis of the entire show, in other words: the difference between order and justice, and the reminder that eventually you have to pick one.
Textually, Nate’s response to this version of insight is defensiveness and misdirected hostility, which makes sense, because when you’re used to intellectualizing your feelings, actually feeling them is overwhelming and horrible, especially at first. This is only further compounded if you also have a precarious relationship with sobriety and are kinda maybe possibly just a little bit self-medicating your depression and anxiety with alcohol.
The show also sets up parallels between Nate and Parker right away, and this is one; Parker’s insight works the same way Nate’s does. In The Bank Shot Job, we see this: when Nate stays inside the bank instead of walking out with the cash, it’s Parker who says, “Don’t be an idiot, Hardison! Sophie was still in there.”
Why did Parker understand that emotional connection and put it together faster than Hardison? I think we can all agree her emotional intuition is much worse than his, particularly in season one—but she is much more observant. She watches and she learns, much like Nate does.
And, like Nate’s brain, her brain is constantly making connections—thus, in full on pattern recognition mode, she had already noticed and was now connecting Nate’s previous patterns of behavior to his behavior in the bank, resulting in her immediate (correct) deduction of his motives.
Nate and Parker are insightful the way Sherlock Holmes is insightful, and if anyone wants to tell me Sherlock motherfucking Holmes has a WIS score high enough to be a cleric, I need you to please share the strong drugs you’re on, they sound bizarre and amazing.
Just about the entire fandom headcanons Parker as on the spectrum; so, I posit, is Nate, and human nature is his special interest.
Nate is your dad’s friend who has the most intricate model train setup imaginable in his basement and will easily spend four hours telling you every single detail about every single type of model train currently in existence (whether you wanted to know or not)—except instead of trains, all of that meticulous mental energy is being channeled toward this.
It’s really no surprise he gave some dude a nosebleed with the power of his mind, honestly.
Next, in The First David Job, we have Nate absolutely sure that Parker will be able to steal The First David on a whim, because he knows damn well she started idly planning how to steal it the instant they started talking about it. She can’t turn that off any more than he can turn his brain off, and he knows it. There’s also Nate being smacked upside the head by emotion and deflecting that emotion once again in response.
Sophie calls him out on none of this being a selfless crusade on his part either, and rather than acknowledge that, Nate deflects with, “Well, I was right, wasn’t I? That is the voice you use on a mark.”
Nate can’t handle the intense emotion going on right now and has to retreat behind solving things and being right in order to deal.
“Always your fatal flaw,” Sophie tells him. “You think too much.”
You know. Wisdom.
In The Second David Job, we have further Nate-Parker parallels, as once Nate informs the others that Blackpoole and Sterling know they’re coming, Parker smiles what can only be described as a terrifyingly knowing smile before she asks, “And how do they know that?”
Nate, looking directly at her, and knowing damn well she already knows the answer, replies, “Because I told them.”
Later, during further planning, it’s Parker who first says, “What about Maggie?” The others misinterpret her at first, but Nate snaps his head toward her a little, brain clearly whirring madly—he knows exactly what she means, immediately.
Parker is also the one who asks him point blank, “So, fine, without Maggie, what’s plan B?” because she knows damn well there isn’t one.
Of course, the ruse they attempt on Maggie falls flat on its face, as it is literally Nate’s jealousy that fucks it up for them. He insisted Eliot wear that button cam because of it, and she immediately clocks that something is up because of it.
Ah, yes. Wisdom.
Shortly after that we have the Nate-Maggie confrontation and conversation where Nate finally tells Maggie about Blackpoole denying the claim that might’ve saved Sam’s life, and she hits him with, “Why didn’t you tell me this? I work with these people, I am friendly with them. You just let me walk around like an idiot! He’s my son too!” Quite tragically she doesn’t also literally hit him, perhaps with a rock or maybe a truck, which is what he thoroughly deserves for withholding that information from her.
Why did he do that, she asks?
“I didn’t want you to hate me,” he tells her, by which he means, “I hate myself for what I now see as my complicity in our son’s death by working for someone who could so coldly make that decision, simply not questioning this horrible policy until it affected me personally… and I assumed you would too.”
“Why would I hate you?” Maggie then asks.
“I do,” he says, which is only part of the reason. Yes, depression is a filthy liar and incredibly persuasive. But with Nate, there’s also, “I’m wondering if I didn’t tell you in part because it meant you’d still have a genuine connection to that world I might be able to exploit if needed.”
Because truthfully, there’s no way that Nate didn’t immediately start plotting, even if just in his head, about how to ruin Blackpoole for what he did. Like Parker told Hardison in The First David Job: some people do crosswords.
This is routinely how his brain works! He thinks of these things abstractly (potential advantage in the future) but not of the personal emotional implications (it’s hella fucked up to not tell Maggie) until far later on.
But, yeah, sure. Wisdom.
I’m going to keep pointing out the Nate-Parker parallels as I see them because a) I love them and b) if Nate is a cleric then what does that say about Parker? Has your head exploded yet? Mine is getting close.
In The Beantown Bailout Job, we learn Nate quit drinking and rented a condo above a bar so that he might further punish himself. This man needs to try Wellbutrin or something, I swear to god.
“That’s very… Catholic,” says Eliot, succinctly.
Nate’s face in reaction to that line is super uncomfortable. He does not like being confronted with that insight. Of course not—it might inspire introspection of a sort that terrifies him to do. There’s a reason he just fundamentally doesn’t understand the motive behind Sophie’s sabbatical later on in this season.
Yet another quick little scene wherein Eliot basically just lays Nate’s id out on the table for inspection and Nate squirms awkwardly about it, wishing he were dead.
Also, like, there’s literally the part where Nate’s getting the crap kicked out of him, and we get this exchange:
“You’re Jimmy Ford’s kid, Nathan. Thought you were gonna become a priest.”
“Didn’t work out.”
So even if you were drawing the rather facile priest to cleric parallel, that’s a literal, explicit, textual refutation of the entire concept: it didn’t work out.
Further Nate-Parker shenanigans, in the form of half sentences because the other halves are implied:
“And this money came from,” Nate asks, inclined slightly toward Parker.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Perfect.”
The little satisfied smile on Parker’s face after that is blinding. That was something she decided to do. She’s already starting to think like a mastermind, staying multiple steps ahead.
And then we end that episode with Nate finding out Sophie has a boyfriend, buying a shot of whiskey, making out with it a little bit, and then setting it back down and walking away, because men will do anything except go to therapy.
But, absolutely, yes, I’m convinced. Wisdom!
In The Two Live Crew Job, we get a whole lot of fun obliviousness and Nate running into feelings that do not compute.
Starting with Sophie and Hardison in the van, there’s,“We trust Nate to make sure the plan works. We trust you to make sure we’re all okay,” from Hardison, neatly summing up the Nate and Sophie dichotomy and helpfully proving my entire point about the things Nate is good at and the things Nate is very much not good at.
Later: “Who does this guy think he is?” Nate asks of the arrogant, smug, know-it-all bastard waltzing in like he owns the place, neatly dodging the approximately seventeen metric fucktons of irony careening directly for his head.
He does this with zero self-awareness, of course, because Nate is neither introspective nor wise. He is brilliant, but emotions fuck him up.
The more of these episodes I rewatch the more I’m starting to believe that BlueSky post was in and of itself an elaborate con to drive me insane.
In The Three Strikes Job, we further explore Nate’s struggles with single fatherhood and his inability to properly sit with his emotions. There is, of course, the first message to Sophie, the very straightforward, “The team could really use you on this one,” aka the standard call of emotionally immature fathers everywhere, attempting as they do to guilt their wives into picking up their slack the moment things get a little dicey or emotionally fraught.
Yes, Nate, you are out of your depth. Sit with that for a minute, maybe.
It then continues to devolve, naturally:
“No one knows who they are,” insists man who has tried everything to feel better, except for literally anything that might make him feel better.
Throughout the episode, Nate continues to deny the obvious, snapping, “I’m not a thief,” so intensely that at this point it’s obvious he’s mainly trying to convince himself.
Being in denial about something is super wise, right? I think so. That sounds correct.
In further obvious parallels Nate is incredibly oblivious to:
“This guy dedicated his life to doing the right thing! And this is his payback? I mean, his family’s pain is what he deserves? If we don’t settle the score on this, why do we do this? Do you understand?”
The OT3 exchange a glance packed to the brim with meaning.
Yes, Nate, it is quite tragic that someone did the right thing all his life and then was ruthlessly betrayed for no real reason other than selfishness and greed. I just hope you can truly empathize with such an experience. I’m sure there is nothing in particular about this case that is causing this sort of reaction and it is merely justice you are inspired by.
Yes. That is absolutely a true convincing story that I believe.
In The Maltese Falcon Job, an old favorite comes back to delight us once more! That’s right, it’s time for the semi-annual ‘Eliot explains to Nate how his emotions work’ informative lecture. Let’s listen in!
“I think in the last six months, Nate, I’ve heard you talking about beating the triads, beating the Russians, all right? Maggie’s boyfriend, huh, how’d that work out? We all said that meet was a bad idea, all right? But you got a taste for taking down this mayor, and you can’t resist… Not walking away, that’s not my job. My job is to get your back, and Nate, I’m gonna do it, all the way down. But I need you to do your job.”
“And what’s that?”
Parker, straight to the point: “Be Nathan Ford. Be the person we came back for.”
Eliot’s job is to get Nate’s back. Sometimes getting his back involves telling him to get his shit together. That’s also why he tends to be his conscience interpreter and emotional regulation coach. (I do deeply appreciate how much this isn’t just left for Sophie to do. Sure, she does some of it, especially once they get together, but Eliot still does a lot of it even then… like, yes, men, you do still have a responsibility to help improve the other men around you even if there are also women in their lives!)
Nate continues to struggle as a single father but is finally beginning to appreciate all the emotional labor Sophie was handling for the team. Making sure everyone is okay is way harder than making sure the plan works, as it turns out.
Gosh, whoever could’ve guessed.
I’m seriously trying to understand where in all of these ‘Nate Ford has the emotional IQ of an unripe kumquat’ type scenes I was supposed to come away with the impression that he was wise. Am I being trolled? I’m being trolled, aren’t I? This was all a ploy to make an extra $5 in residuals, wasn’t it?
In The Jailhouse Job, Hardison straight up calls Nate out on his martyrdom: “Fine, Nate. We’re still out here, we’re doing the job. We help people nobody else helps. That’s important. You wanna stay around and miss out just because you gotta figure out your guilty conscience? That’s your loss.” (Meanwhile Eliot is eyeing him like “dammit Hardison you’re hot when you’re calling Nate on his bullshit.”)
Nate, of course, is under the impression that his “sacrifice” is “noble” rather than what it really is: a cowardly attempt to abdicate the responsibility he created for himself and the team.
Growth is not linear, as we know. Nate definitely made some strides in season two toward self-actualization but is now attempting to revert to the familiar: punishment. Punishment is rarely ambiguous, after all, and Nate is particularly adept at hiding behind his shame like it’s a shield: I did something wrong, I must be punished. Do we examine the wrongness of these actions and what makes them wrong? Do we consider who is determining what is wrong and why? Do we contemplate which of these so-called wrongs are being focused on, or even perhaps what sorts of punishments are expected?
No. He did something wrong. He must be punished. That does sound much simpler to deal with, doesn’t it?
The Inside Job is an amazing episode both in terms of Nate, Parker, their relationship with each other and with crime, but also Nate and Sophie and the ways they relate to the team. As they approach Parker’s apartment, we get a brilliant demonstration of their respective strengths:
Nate knows about the dummy addresses, because of course he does—that’s the sort of thing he would absolutely think to do, makes total sense to throw others off.
Sophie guesses Parker’s access code because she knows Parker.
“Who knows what goes on in that girl’s head?” Nate asks, and Sophie promptly answers via one freshly unlocked door, a delightful compare-and-contrast of INT-based and WIS-based insight.
Seriously, this scene is such a stark textual delineation of their abilities, and it continues as they enter Parker’s place, Sophie suddenly utterly baffled while Nate now seems totally nonchalant.
At first glance this looks like an inconsistency, but nah, it’s completely in line with what we’ve been shown re: the sorts of things Sophie and Nate are each experts at. Anytime it’s an internal, intuitive issue (what would Parker use for a password), Nate struggles. Anytime it’s something analytical or based on some observable pattern, (what would Parker’s physical space look like based on her typical behavior), he excels.
In contrast, Eliot’s lack of surprise is rooted in instinctual understanding, because he and Parker have their own similarities. (Like Sophie, he also guesses the code to get in, but he lets Hardison hack it just to be nice.)
I’ll give Nate credit in this episode; he’s come a long way and is making realizations that a season or so ago he never would’ve. This does mean, however, that the wisest Nate Ford has ever looked is in direct comparison to Archie Leech.
The phrase “damning with faint praise” comes to mind for some reason.
Parker of course quickly comes to the conclusion Nate already did, but was waiting for her to reach on her own. See, with Parker, Nate makes for a really effective mentor, because the way they synthesize information is just so similar. It’s awesome to see so plainly here.
“Okay, it’s your show. Go for it.” He’s so proud. It’s fucking adorable. I really did not pay close enough attention to how sweet the Nate-Parker relationship is. They’re honestly really cute.
I had to rewatch a bunch of The Rashomon Job twice because I forgot about the pink dress Gina Bellman wears in this episode and my brain short circuited a little the first time. Whomst amongst us, etc.
My favorite bits in this one are again between Nate and Parker. After Hardison finishes his story, I love the way Nate uses the teacups as he starts summing things up: “Sophie didn’t have the dagger. Eliot didn’t have the dagger. Hardison didn’t have the dagger.”
Then he looks knowingly at Parker, taps her left hand, and she smirks knowingly back, revealing the little ball, a neat little foreshadowing of what happens in Nate’s tale… I love it.
“Yeah,” she says, and that look they share! Man, they are adorable, honestly.
Then, later on, it is—of course!—Parker who first zeroes in on the next twist: “...Nate?”
Another knowing smile.
Anyway, things I know for a fact:
1) Sophie and Eliot hooked up that night and probably broke the bed
2) there is no universe wherein Sophie freakin’ Devereaux doesn’t know when a man has that obvious a crush on her, Nate, I call utter bullshit, that’s a “saw him use the air vents” level of sus, my friend
3) Parker’s version is the most true
In The San Lorenzo Job, first, an aside: we get a delightful little scene where Parker determines how far down a pipe goes via echolocation, basically, because she’s a goddamn badass. I love her so much.
But anyway, more relevantly: this entire episode is Sophie turning Vittori into the dude he needs to be to actually help San Lorenzo and Nate watching that and coordinating his plan around her. It’s honestly pretty romantic, especially for Nate! Extra especially since she jumped in to keep his plan afloat. I think this was very sweetly reflected by the way Sophie felt at the end—partners. A team. Friends. Aka, the foundation that every actual successful romantic relationship has to be built on!
And it does—once again—reinforce their respective types of expertise.
In The Long Way Down Job, first thing:
“I’ve heard of denial, but climbing a mountain to avoid talking about…”
Nate, once again, deeply uncomfortable being confronted with his emotions and his inevitable compartmentalization of them.
Ah, truly the wisest among us.
Of course Parker’s the one to first mention that they’ve already stolen a mountain, and then her boyfriends helpfully jump in to assist, Hardison getting the KO: “You were also very drunk on that one.”
Nate, naturally, immediately flees.
“You’ll suit up? You shouldn’t even be up here.” Ooh, the opening notes of that familiar and beloved tune, the certified classic, ‘shut up and listen to Eliot, Nate, he knows better than you about this’.
Nate’s weak attempt at deflection is to pretend Eliot is the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, which Eliot wisely ignores and continues on: “Every second you’re on this mountain, your clock is ticking. You’re very good at what you do, but you can’t con a mountain.”
Nate, later, to Karen, with zero self-awareness: “You’re emotionally involved, it leads to bad decisions.”
Hardison, literally taking the words out of my mouth: “I’m sorry, did you just say that? With a straight face?”
Thank you, Hardison! Thank you! Like, I really don’t know how many examples of this are needed to prove my point, but there are so many of them, I figure, why not have a bunch, you know?
“Do not do this! As if you ever listen to me,” Sophie says, surely something that all the wisest men in the world want to hear from their significant others.
Nate’s conversation with Karen is so poignant because we know it’s a hard-earned lesson for Nate. We’ve literally been watching him learn it! Nate’s entire character arc is rooted in this lesson!
The Eliot-Parker scene in this episode is, of course, perfection, and gut-wrenching in the best way possible. Although, she was slightly wrong—Nate would’ve eventually given up and left the body behind too, but then he would’ve drank himself into a coma afterward to escape the guilt.
…sort of a distinction without a difference, admittedly.
In The Boys’ Night Out Job, right out of the gate:
“Yes, I want to be like my father, good insight, Sophie.”
Sophie’s look says what she is too nice to say aloud: “Well, whether you want to or not…”
Everyone gangs up on Nate and his inability to Normal Person, while he insists he’s totally fine. The guys then start playing poker and he literally gets up and flees at the first hint of feelings.
Right, of course, how could I forget, isolating oneself and never talking about anything remotely emotional, just the absolute height of enlightenment and clarity. Truly, the wisdom, I am awed.
This episode makes it clear that Hurley has come further in his journey than Nate has in his, even with his habit of unwittingly stumbling into nonsense. He truly values what Nate and the team gave him and takes it seriously, takes it to heart, in a way Nate is just cynically scoffing at for much of this episode. Cynicism is the antithesis of wisdom. Cynicism is cowardice. Hurley is being vulnerable, and Nate still struggles a lot with being vulnerable.
Fortunately, he does seem to finally internalize this lesson at the end, when Hardison helpfully talks him through his emotions this time. (Eliot was busy flirting with Not-Sister Lupe, so it was his turn, you see.) “Hardison? Thanks.”
Growth! Improvement! 10000% still a massive work in progress!
The Last Dam Job, or: Nate Plays Magnificent Bastard—aka the most INT-based trope to ever trope in the history of tropes.
I adore the climax of this episode, which very dramatically takes place atop a dam (in what reads as a fun The Reichenbach Fall allusion), and is a very nice backdrop for Nate to deftly wrap up his whole plot.
I suppose at least this way he has some small amount of plausible deniability; he can tell himself that they both made the final choice themselves. Technically.
However, when you consider the fact that he deliberately provoked them both into fight or flight responses, painstakingly talked them through the fact that if one of them dies, the other goes free, and then placed a loaded weapon on the very edge of a dam before walking away—well, one wonders how much of a choice either of them really had, in the end.
Brutal, Nate. Poetic, but brutal. “Welcome to the next time,” indeed.
The psychology in play, especially at the end, is so Holmesian and the setting underlined that, which once again supports what I’ve been saying all along: Nate makes his insight checks with his intelligence modifier.
…nobody thinks that Sherlock Holmes’ D&D class is cleric, right?
Right?
The Frame Up Job right away has Nate barrelling straight into a special interest like a nerd, so that’s always fun.
Seriously, this episode is basic gender politics on display. You know that trope where someone (often female) is venting to their (often male) partner and the partner starts offering various suggestions on how to change or “fix” the situation, which only irritates the partner who is just trying to vent? That's the gist, except it's Nate and Sophie, so there are also felonies involved.
Just. Be there. For her. That’s all Sophie is asking in this episode, Nate.
Nate does come through on that front, fortunately. He does learn! He does grow. He does change. Sometimes it takes a minute to sink in, but it happens. The thing is: none of these are lessons an already wise man would need to learn.
Lastly, we have The Long Goodbye Job, absolutely one of the best series finales of all time, even if it does also probably count as a war crime. Psychological damage, you know.
I will for the rest of my life love the fact that since the whole death scene is just a story Nate made up, he specifically chose to include the detail of the OT3 dying together holding hands just because.
Subtle, Nate. Subtle.
You recall how in The Nigerian Job Eliot had to entirely explain to Nate why he felt good conning Dubenich and why his conscience was clear, aka the difference between order and justice, and how at that time Nate barely wanted to hear it? Fittingly, we then end with Nate offering exactly that choice to Sterling and telling him to pick one, knowing full well that Sterling will ultimately choose justice just like Nate did.
It’s a satisfying conclusion to his character arc for sure.
Now. Is Nate Ford a cleric? If he is, I can only imagine that he is not a very good one.
I will concede a dip of a level or two at some point is possible, maybe. But the only way cleric is Nate Ford’s main class is if you are categorically stating he is, at best, mediocre at what he does, and that is quite plainly not at all the case.
Nate Ford is a brilliant and profoundly broken man, forced to confront the grave inadequacies of his entire worldview in possibly the worst way imaginable. He craves interpersonal connections he has no idea how to cultivate, and it is very difficult for him to sit with his emotions, causing him to frequently lash out. He does not do well with intuition, emotion, or expression, but with patterns, deductions, and observations. He likes to understand how things work, he likes to understand how people work, “solving” them the way most people solve a crossword.
As I said before, I think these are Nate’s ending stats:
14 STR / 13 DEX / 15 CON / 22 INT / 14 WIS / 18 CHA
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The West Wing
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: John Marbury/Leo McGarry
Characters: Josh Lyman, C. J. Cregg, Toby Ziegler, Sam Seaborn, Leo McGarry, John Marbury, Jed Bartlet, Donna Moss
Additional Tags: Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Getting Outed, Insecurity, Feelings are hard okay, Figuring Things Out
Summary:
Leo tried not to sigh. He knew Jed only meant well, and that the man had never really understood why they’d kept things as secretive as they had to begin with.
“Yeah, sure, I guess we can say that,” he said, and Jed gave him a scrutinizing look.
“You’re not ashamed of it, are you?”
Leo and Marbury are outed. It results in some introspection.
